Welcome to Bimmerfest -- The #1 Online Community for BMW related information! Please enjoy the discussion forums below and share your experiences with the 200,000 current, new and past BMW owners. The forums are broken out by car model and into other special interest sections such as BMW European Delivery and a special forum to voice your questions to the many BMW dealers on the site to assist our members!

On the way from Arizona to the SoCal Euro event in Ventura last month, the CHP stopped me and wrote me up for "VC 27605 Vehicle Resembling Law Enforcement Vehicle." This despite the fact that it's all in German and my company's URL is right on the side of the vehicle as well.

I hoping that providing the court with some pictures of my car at BimmerFest will help prove that it's for show car purposes. So if anyone has any pictures of my Polizei E36 at BimmerFest or SoCal Euro PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE post them up!

In addition if my car happens to grace any spreads of the magazine coverage of BimmerFest let me know! Thanks guys!

Tom, where was your car during the show? Was it inside the exhibition hall or outside on the grass or where on the parking lot, just curious since i have a couple hundred pictures it would be easier to locate.

Sorry dude any vehicle that says police on it is required to be a police car even if it resembles the word police it wil apply because the public woudl reasonably think if it says it it must be. Yours is close enough but if your remove the stickers before court and show the judge that they are no longer there I can guarantee that there will be no fine.
The statute does not say it has to look like CHP vehicle to apply, only that it resemble a police car or have police equipment.
Yours says it on the side so it was a good stop.

Sorry dude any vehicle that says police on it is required to be a police car even if it resembles the word police it wil apply because the public woudl reasonably think if it says it it must be. Yours is close enough but if your remove the stickers before court and show the judge that they are no longer there I can guarantee that there will be no fine.
The statute does not say it has to look like CHP vehicle to apply, only that it resemble a police car or have police equipment.
Yours says it on the side so it was a good stop.

I disagree, I had logged over 1000 miles within California and Nevada with the Polizei E36 and had absolutely no issues. In fact, I asked a local Ventura PD officer at SoCal Euro about my ticket and he didn't understand why the CHP would have wasted their time with me.

Locally where I'm from I inquired about the same thing... I was going to buy an ex-cop car, make it look exactly like a real cop car, minus the real phone numbers and Calghary POlice, it would just say Police, real working lights and everything. The officers I've talked to about it said it would be just fine, as long as I never pretended to be an officer, used the lights for anything other then offroad (show use), or make people think in any other way I have authority.

Locally where I'm from I inquired about the same thing... I was going to buy an ex-cop car, make it look exactly like a real cop car, minus the real phone numbers and Calghary POlice, it would just say Police, real working lights and everything. The officers I've talked to about it said it would be just fine, as long as I never pretended to be an officer, used the lights for anything other then offroad (show use), or make people think in any other way I have authority.

Thats a good point. If a BMW can be ticketed for imitating a police vehicle, what about all the ex-police vehicles that are sold to the public?

There is no hiding that police enforcement is a multi-billion dollar a year industry, esp. here in the good ole USA.

Last night I saw an old american car parked Applebee's, and until I walked past it, it looked like a police car. Black with police looking symbols. Probably was a ~30 year old former police car, and I really don't know the model. When you were 5 feet away you could see that it said "south park" as the district though. Anyhow, that seems like a worse copy that the above e36, since we are in the US and there arn't any german police cars here!